The Sarmatians held sway through around 300 AD, when the Germanic Goths invaded from the northwest and contributed to their decline, but the final force that ended the combined Scytho-Sarmatian culture was the arrival of the Oriental Xiongnu people called the Huns, who eventually dominated from the 300’s through the 400’s. Two further Scythian innovations that arose from this were pants - leather in their case - useful to prevent chafing of the legs when riding for extended periods of time, and the Scythian composite bow, which was composed of multiple layers for power, as well as, having curved-back ends, which gave it even more power, and allowed it to be relatively small, so that it could be used to shoot in rapid succession from horseback (it appears in Greek mythology as Cupid’s bow).īy around 200 BC, the Scythians were pushed aside, though not fully displaced, by their Eastern Iranian cousins - with whom they had previously lived relatively peacefully for centuries - the Sarmatians, thought to be the direct ancestors of today’s Ossetians, earlier known as the Alans or Alani, and of course, partly the ancestors of today’s Ukrainians. They are most famous for first domesticating the horse and then developing the art of mounted warfare.
The Scythians ruled in Ukraine from around 800 BC to around 300 AD. Some time after 1,300 BC the Indo-European Cimmerians (a/k/a Kimmerians) arrived, then were displaced from the Pontic Steppes by the westward-moving Scythians, also Indo-Europeans, starting after around 800 BC (the Cimmerians eventually wound up in modern-day Turkey). In a process that is not yet well understood, their culture eventually or possibly violently, gave way to the influx of the nomadic, pastoral, patriarchical Indo-Europeans or Kurgans, but it is generally agreed, that the Trypillians were not displaced, but assimilated into the new culture that formed. It was one of the ancient pre-Indo-European Neolithic cultures of Europe. This culture appears to have been highly advanced for its time, agricultural, matriarchical and peaceful. From around 6,000 BC to 3,500 BC the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture flourished in what would later become the southwestern half of Ukraine, all of Moldova and northeastern Romania. During the maximum extent of the last Ice Age, most of Ukraine found itself south of the ice sheet and was inhabited by people who are not well researched as yet.